Schools may consider voc ed tax

A property tax proposal to help pay for vocational education in central Michigan could come before voters by the end of next year.

Mt. Pleasant Public Schools Superintendent Mike Pung told members of his board that he and other superintendents across the Gratiot Isabella Regional Education Service District have been discussing the possibility of trying to craft a millage proposal. He emphasized that it’s still very much in the talking stage.

“I may be the last one to bring this to my board,” Pung said.

The Mt. Pleasant Area Technical Center is housed at Mt. Pleasant High School and run by the Mt.Pleasant school district. It serves students from across the region.

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The tech center is supported by taking a share of each student’s state foundation grant. That means that the home district doesn’t get that money.

Pung said some school districts that send students to the tech center have resorted to limiting the number of students who attend.

“We have had some districts hold lotteries to see who’s coming,” Pung said. That’s limited the ability of the tech center to provide the kind of technical training that students want, he said.

“This will be the third year we haven’t built a school house,” Pung said. The building trades program once designed and built a new home each year, but the crash in the real estate market made it difficult to sell them and recoup the costs.

The cost of providing vocational and technical training often is higher than educating students in a regular classroom, the superintendent said. Tech programs require equipment, tools and materials.

Pung, whose career as an educator began in vocational education, said state law allows a consortium of districts to ask voters for up to 1 mill for up to 10 years to support technical education.

But board member Don Chiodo, noting that Mt. Pleasant schools also is likely to need money for major school building maintenance, had some reservations.

“You don’t want to see too many issues over too short a period of time,” Chiodo said.

Pung said that despite efforts to push post-secondary education, the need for technical workers remains. Vocational education can help employers fill those jobs.